A 1,000 square foot studio, women’s-only strength studio has been launched in Brooklyn, New York. Every component of Tension has been intentionally designed for women’s training.

With classes capped at 12 participants, founder, Kristie Larson, promises that every member will get real coaching attention. Each class follows the same structure: a stabilising warm-up, 10 rounds of strength work and a core finisher. 

The progressive programme rotates through upper body, lower body and full-body days and builds each week. For this reason, it’s a membership model rather than a drop-in, Larson says the members who see results are the ones who show up repeatedly.

Cardio has been deliberately left out of the mix. Larson says women have been taught to chase cardio fatigue, being smaller and counting carbs for too long, but this studio offers a different approach. 

“It's a deliberate choice to leave out cardio, and it's one I feel strongly about. We're a strength training studio,” Larson told HCM. “The reason we don't chase cardio fatigue is because we're actually trying to build muscle. Adequate rest between sets allows for heavier weights and better form. That's not a gap in our programming, it's the point of it. Women's fitness has spent decades equating sweating with progress. We're not interested in that. We're interested in what actually works.”

The target market is women who know they should be lifting, but have never been taught how. “That's a bigger group than people realise,” says Larson. “Only about 27 per cent of women meet federal guidelines for muscle-strengthening activity, and the gap isn't about motivation. It's about access to real coaching and programming that was built with women in mind from the start.

“Our members tend to be women who make high-stakes decisions all day and want to show up somewhere that handles the thinking for them. We do the programming, the progression, the form cues. Their job is to do the work. Whether they're coming back from injury, training for the first time, or experienced lifters who are tired of inconsistent results, they belong here.”

Larson says Tension is an antidote to traditional spaces that many women, including herself, have experienced: “being ignored by trainers, prescribed workouts that weren't built for their physiology and told to shrink rather than build.

“Designing Tension for women meant building the programming around women's needs, not adapting a generic model to them. It meant dumbbell-based programming that reduces intimidation and injury risk. It meant a studio environment where phones stay off the floor, so the focus stays on the workout. It meant being honest about what training can and can't do, because women have wasted enough time on workouts that overpromise. The feedback from early members has centered on one thing: finally feeling like they understand what they're doing and why. That clarity is what we built for.”

As well as the approach being focused around what women need, Larson says having a female-only environment helps with progress and confidence.

“Strength training is hard enough without the audience,” she says. “In mixed facilities, women consistently report feeling watched, unsure and under-coached. That's not a personal failing, it's the environment. When the space is built around women's experiences and led by coaches who understand women's physiology and the specific barriers women face in gyms, the dynamic shifts.

“But it's more than absence of discomfort. It's the presence of something better. We’re completely centered around our community and our coaching is created from a woman’s perspective, not adapted to it. 

“The research is also worth noting here: women receive two to three times the mortality benefit from strength training compared to men, and they reach peak benefit from fewer sessions per week. The case for training environments built specifically around women is not just cultural, it's physiological.”

There are plans for further studios in the future. Larson says there is huge demand for this type of training and she intends to meet it: “We're building a proven model and programming approach that doesn't depend on one location or one instructor. The goal is to make women-centered, evidence-based strength training accessible well beyond our flagship location in Brooklyn.”

Footnote:

A new white paper from Sophie Lawler and the team at Total Fitness, due to to be published on Monday 30 March, gives insight into the women-only gym market. HCM will publish an in-depth report at 12.00noon on the day. Sign up for your complimentary copy at www.HCMmag.com/signup